What's going on, Pursuers?
Welcome to this episode of the Proceed of Calling podcast.
I'm your host, Thomas Carney.
And in this episode, I talked about the time I almost lost $4,000 and the lessons I learned
from that.
So let's dive in.
How's it going, guys?
Let's dive right in to this kind of embarrassing story.
So it's important, though.
It was scary for me because this was the second most amount of money that I almost lost to
something like this, which you might be like, Thomas, what the heck?
Why are you almost losing thousands of dollars?
And I think it's because I have ambition, but it's also because I make dumb decisions.
So a little bit of backstory about this time.
So I thought it was time to hire a coach again.
I was perusing through Instagram, as one does, and saw an ad that was for Christian coaches,
coaches who are Christians who wanted to learn more about how to be a coach, essentially.
And so this was Christian coaches coaching Christian coaches, essentially.
That was how this was portrayed.
And so I signed up for the form, sign up for the call.
I thought it was going to be a free call where I got a little bit of value, but that's not
really what happened.
It ended up being a sales call where some, a little bit what I would call sleazy sales
tactics, sleazy sales tactics were used.
And I ended up saying yes to the call.
I saying yes to that call to or say I went on the call.
I ended up saying yes and spent $4,000.
I gave them my credit card information.
What saved me in the end, I'll be honest with you, what saved me from actually losing $4,000
is probably that they didn't have me signed anything.
So that was on them.
But in the long run, what ended up happening is I did not lose $4,000 because I learned
the power of saying no.
So we're going to jump right into that.
So what does it mean?
Before we talk about saying no, we're going to talk about what it means to say yes to
the wrong thing.
Because that's what happened in my case.
So saying yes to the, the wrong thing, it causes you to steer straight away from your
calling.
In this instance, for me, where I wanted to go into this coaching program, but then I
realized pretty quickly, like literally, literally, like right after the call was done, I realized
that it's not what I wanted to do.
I talked with Sean, who used to be the co-host of the Tech with Key Short podcast.
We talked and he was like, yeah, man, you should get your money back because you clearly
don't want to do this.
And so that, you know, set off the whole thing of me talking with them, then getting my money
back.
And now they didn't want to give me my money back.
So I had to dispute it.
That's a whole other thing.
But the, but saying yes to the wrong thing, like I said, cause you to stray away from
your calling.
And that could be maybe it can even just cause you to stray away from, you know, the great
things in life.
Right?
Like you could say, let's put it in the context of eating habits.
You can say yes to that next donut or you can say no and put it down and say, I'm going
to be healthier.
I'm actually on a diet.
I'm on a diet so I can lose weight.
I am actually, or I'm actually not going to eat that donut because I need to leave room
for the food, the great food.
I'm going to eat later.
Cause I only, you only got so much room in your stomach.
Right?
You can't, like we're going to get into this more.
I'm trying to jumping ahead of myself, but your, you only got so much room in your stomach.
You can't fill it up with all these good things, all these sweet, delicious things.
Cause I love dessert.
Don't get me wrong.
But you can't fill your stomach up on dessert and then expect to, to build muscle and expect
to have all this great energy.
If you didn't leave room for the great, for the great things, the food that are going
to, for the things that are going to fuel you, the food that's going to fuel you for
your future, the things that you're actually working towards.
Whew.
That's good.
I don't like pat myself with, I don't, you don't always want to pat yourself from the
back, but I'm pretty happy about that one.
So for me, when I, when I went and said yes to this coaching program, you know, I had
said yes to the wrong thing and I almost realized it too late.
However, this experience gave me the wisdom to more easily say no to that the next time.
Kind of like how endurance works.
It's all about learning, right?
Learning no for me, learn going through this experience taught me to say no to the, to
these wrong things.
Just like whenever you're enduring something hard, it teaches you to endure better the
next time.
Like this is all about personal growth and development and learning and learning how
to do these great learning, how to do great things for yourself and for those around you.
So why is it important?
Why is this important for you?
Why do you have to say, why do you have to know how to say no to the no to the wrong
things and yes to the right things?
Like, why does that matter?
Well, if you're pursuing your calling, if this, if you're here and you're a pursuer,
like then I believe this is something that you, a skill that you want to perfect.
Not, well, you want to be excellent at.
Excellence does not mean perfection.
We're going to strike that away right now.
The saying no to the wrong things, you know, it will help you stay on your path of pursuing
your calling and away from the path that only takes you away from it.
This might seem a little vague, so let me try to put it into a little bit more context.
Saying no to something doesn't necessarily mean that that thing is bad.
Like we already talked about, about with the donut.
Donuts aren't bad.
They're bad for you, but they taste good.
Eating one donut isn't going to kill you, right?
It's not a bad thing to eat.
I don't think it's even a bad thing to eat one donut, right?
It's not healthy for you, but it tastes really good and it gives you a little bit of satisfaction.
It makes your like, I love sugar.
Can you, I kind of want to get dessert now.
I want a donut.
Go to Oakmont Bakery.
But the, does that make any sense?
I kind of, I actually really rushed through that, that lesson, but why is it important
for you?
Think about your, think about your calling.
Think about the things that you could be doing better.
Think about the things.
I want you to actually comment below.
Comment the things that you either given up in the past in the, for the sake of great
things or if you can't think of something, comment below the things that you can give
up in order to make room for the great.
Comment what you're going to give up and the great thing that you're going to replace
with it.
There are so many great things out there, but there are way more good things, right?
There's so many good things to say yes to.
The Instagram advocation is everywhere.
How are you going to, how are you going to say no to these?
How are you going to say no to these good things and where are you going to say no to?
Why are you going to do it?
See how, what and why?
Why are you going to say no to these things?
Because you're pursuing your calling.
You have a great calling on your life.
Something that God has destined for you, something that you're living in every day.
You can't do that well.
You can't do that with excellence.
If you keep saying yes to all of the right, you can't keep doing that if you're always
saying yes to the good, only the good things and saying no.
You especially can't do that.
And honestly, I think this is actually more important.
If you keep saying no to the, no to the wrong, well, if you keep saying yes to the wrong,
to the wrong things, you keep saying no to the right things.
Like, I think that's when people start to spiral.
That's when people's lives start to go into the pits.
But that's also where you learn, you know, to kind of, that's also when you get sharpened.
That's also when you're kind of against the grindstone to learn how to say yes to, to
endure and say yes to the right things, say no to the wrong things and stay on the right
path to pursue your calling well.
Does that make sense?
I want you to tell me in the comments what you think of this episode so far.
I'm going to go talk a little bit about one more lesson just very briefly and then we're
going to wrap it up.
So how to listen to your mentors.
That's what I, that's another great lesson that I learned here because there are two
people that I talked to during this.
I talked to Ed Newell, Pastor Ed Newell, who had been on the podcast and I've also talked
to Pat Williams, who was also on the podcast previously.
And they both gave me great advice.
They both, I called both of them on different times whenever I was spiraling out of control
because I was losing my mind about losing $4,000.
I was really stressing out guys.
And they, you know why you want to say how to, why you want to listen to these mentors
or why you want to find mentors?
Because they know more than you.
They know more than you.
They've been through more than you.
They've experienced more most of the time.
And like Pat, every, I would send him updates about what these guys were saying to me, like
through Instagram messaging.
They were telling me I was going to leave my money.
I would message Pat and he was like, no, Thomas, you're fine.
You're good.
You didn't sign anything.
Like you're fine.
Just wait.
You're going to get your money back.
You're not, you're, you're, you, and he just kept me, he kept me, he kept me calm.
He kept my mind right.
And Ed did the same for me.
Ed, I called him once whenever I was spiraling out of control because, and I knew it.
So I called him and I was like, I just, I just need to talk because I can't be in my
own head right now.
And because I was thinking about how terrible it was, I would lost $4,000.
I was beating myself up and he helped me not do that.
He gave me great.
He gave me grace.
And so I want to say just real quick to finish off this, to finish off this episode, if you
don't have any mentors, find them, seek them out.
Most of the time they're not going to find you, so you have to find them.
You have to reach out to them.
You have to serve them and ask them how you can ask them, how you can help them so that
you know that you value them.
They know that you value them.
There's a whole lesson in that.
There's a whole podcast episode in that, but there's, but I really just felt like I wanted
to get it, say that I really wanted to say like through that whole experience, the biggest
thing that got me through it wasn't, was my mentors that I already had established in
my life.
So guys, if you listen to this whole episode, which at this point I think you did give it
a five star review, follow the pursuit of calling on Spotify, Apple podcast, wherever
you listen to your podcasts and you know, subscribing really helps out the algorithm,
helps it push to more people expect and also you want to do else.
It helps giving a five star review already said it, but I'm going to say it again, give
them five star review, do it right now so that other people can find this content and
find them out and get value from it and learn something from it and pursue their con so
that in order to pursue their calling well.
All right guys, I'll see you next time.
Peace.